Robot Chicken 5 writeup

In 2010 I was working on Robot Chicken's 5th season as one of three story artists, one of which worked from home exclusively. This particular job felt like a big milestone for me- working on a show that I both knew and enjoyed. It was like living a dream, honestly. Of course, that dream job quickly just became another job, what with how fast we had to create storyboards.

There were 20 episodes, each with 20 pages that needed boards, although only half the sketches would be used. Storyboarding on Robot Chicken (or more specifically, the Shadow Animation studio), I've come to realize, is unlike storyboarding anywhere else. Because we used Flash to draw, we were able to also animate some of the more visually complicated moments. Not only was our time spent drawing, but we were also animating and timing out our scenes. The end result was that our timed, animated boards were sent to the editors, who then re-timed and re-animated a lot of them. It was kind of backwards, but hey, hindsight.

So, out of ~200 storyboard sequences, here's a few that I'd like to show, reformatted for a more convenient 2x3 layout. Also, because I don't have the scripts anymore, I had to remember a lot of the dialogue. But, you'll get the gist of it:

Episode 503, "They Finally Did It":

Episode 506, "Santa's Presents":

Episode 506, "Snow Balls":

Episode 507, "Frat Runner 2":

Episode 507, "Indiana Jones":

Episode 511, "Precious Summary" (This one I kept in its original, timed out, animated format, but with added subtitles for clarity):

Episode 513, "Powers of God":

Episode 516, "Sides of Dice" (Just a single image with subtitles, since it's a pretty simple gag):

Originally the sketch called for two, 6-sided die on a Craps table, but I suggested a D20 and a D&D table instead, which they went for. I mean, not only does the punchline make more sense this way, but it also fits more with the show's demographic (geeks and nerds).

Episode 518, "MC Horse":

I ended up not being too proud of the boards, but I liked these few drawings that came from it.

Episode 519, "Walt Whitman" (again, animated and timed with subtitles):

"Walt Whitman" was never made, but I liked the fun and dumb premise.

Episode 519, "The Ballad of Gay Tony":

"The Ballad of Gay Tony" were the last boards I made for the season. With my hindsight glasses on, I wish I hadn't kept the angles so flat for my boards- everything's facing a stage, dead on. But, like I mentioned before, because we were encouraged to animate and time out our storyboards ourselves, I think that kept us (or me, at least) from finding new angles because it would take more time to animate.

So there you have it, Robot Chicken Season 5. That's not all of my Robot Chicken stuff, though- I also worked on the Robot Chicken Star Wars 3 special, as well as the Robot Chicken DC Special. Those write-ups are on their way too!